10k growth, 14k colour, is it cheating?

[kwirky]

I've been running a 10k 250W bulb on my tank strictly for growth and I added some frags recently as "live test kits" for my tank. One of the frags appeared to be bleaching on it's polyp tips yet it was still growing and had polyp extension.

I popped on my previous 14k 150W light for curiosity's sake and lo and behold those "bleached" tips were phosphorescing BLUE! So I was right and I am getting colour of the the browned out frags like I expected I would and I don't have to be running high-K bulbs to do that.

so I'm keeping my 14k light around to check on the colour progression of my corals here and there but I'm running the 10k full time for growth. best of both worlds . (I also have about 77x turnover in my tank with the return and the vortech so I think that could be a factor in the growth as well).

under the 10k it's completely brown. that little bud at the bottom right grew to that in about 1 week. there's another bud on the other side. these frags had zero growth in the store so i'm pretty excited.